Week in Film
Focus on Film News
April 7 to April 13, 2008
Hung out to dry
11 April 2008
Not exactly the most brilliant criminal plan, but two people in Milan last week tried to pull off promoting a fashion line "Exclusively GC," which was supposed to be George Clooney's new clothing line. The only problem is that Clooney had never heard of it. Clooney, who was promoting Leatherheads and recently finished production on the Coen Brothers's new comedy Burn After Reading, is infamous for his practical jokes, only this was not one of them. Instead Milan police found a store room with boxes of fake garments and watches with the "Exclusively GC" labels and are currently questioning two people in connection with this fashion faux pas. For Clooney, the point was simple: "If someone tries to sell you clothes or watches that are based on me, don't buy them."
Boll bites back
8 April 2008
Uwe Boll has had a funny old time recently. The German director, known for his wildly entertaining interviews just as much as his infamous movie versions of computer games, was recently told by one interviewer about an online petition to stop him from directing, and then was asked how many detractors it would take to get him to hang up his megaphone. Boll's answer? One million. The story was widely reported, the petition gained momentum (rising from around 18,000 to over 10 times that), but Boll has now responded to the pressure by saying there should be a pro-Boll petition. He put forward this suggestion in a video posted on YouTube, and countered that he was "not a fucking retard like Michael Bay or other people running around in the business. Or Eli Roth, making the same shitty movies over and over again. If you really look at my movies you will see my real genius." After plugging his new movie, Postal, he concluded by saying that people had to "really wake up and see me for what I am — I'm the only genius in the whole f***ing business. Goodbye."
Politics and Cinema
9 April 2008
Colin Farrell, who recently played a hitman in the dark comedy In Bruges, made clear last week that that there was nothing funny about real people dying. In Sarajevo to prepare for his part as a photographer in the Bosnian war film Triage, Farrell took a side trip to Srebrenica, the site where some 8,000 Bosnian men and boys were executed in July 1995 by the Serbian paramilitary forces. Visibly shaken by his visit, Farrell told Reuters, "It is hard to describe how obviously the air and the land has been poisoned by the act of killing 8,000 people in the space of a day. But you really do get the sense of the pain and the loss and I am sad, I really am sad." At the same time, the director of Triage, has decided to move beyond making political films to making politics. Danis Tanovic recently formed his own political party in Bosnia. As Tanovic told reporters, "This is an attempt to move the things forward from the present deadlock and we can offer a new choice to Bosnians who have been complaining for years there is nobody adequate they could vote for." While Tanovic is trying to goad local politics, he might also push himself into the public office.
What the Puck?
9 April 2008
Jason Reitman and Kevin Smith have joined the ever-growing ranks of high-profile directors who are blogging — except this time there's a twist. They are among a number of celebrities who have been enlisted by NHL.com to give their personal take on ice hockey as the play-offs get underway. Reitman, the Canadian born Juno helmer, signed on back when the two teams he supports, the Vancouver Canucks and the Los Angeles Kings, were still in with a shout of making the post-season, something which ultimately did not happen. Undeterred, Reitman has come up with an alternative plan: "I decided is that I'm going to write a kind of mythical blog about what the Canucks and Kings would be doing had they still been in. In my version, for the first time in NHL history, the Canucks and the Kings will be the first two Western Conference teams to actually meet in the Stanley Cup finals." Smith, who also blogs at his own website, has already written a handful of posts about his beloved New Jersey Devils (who are still in the hunt for the Stanley Cup), and his entries naturally feature a scattering of his trademark #$#@s and "#$% #$%"s.
Norman and Norma Jean
11 April 2008
During a visit to the Sarasota Film Festival, veteran actor Norman Lloyd (the man who fell off the Statue of Liberty in Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur) revealed two near encounters he had with Marilyn Monroe. Lloyd, who was friends with Hitchcock, Orson Welles and Charlie Chaplin, told a local journalist about how he had recommended that Chaplin (with whom he played tennis almost daily) buy the movie rights to the novel They Shoot Horses, Don't They?. The production was close to greenlit, with Chaplin's son Sydney set to star opposite a very young Marilyn Monroe, but then Chaplin was forced into exile as a result of his Communist sympathies and the movie was shelved. At another time, a friend who ran a bookstore had told Lloyd he should meet a certain young lady with a penchant for classic Russian literature. "I told him, 'I don't want to meet that kind of girl,'" Lloyd recalls. "He insisted and gave me her phone number, writing down the name 'Marilyn Monroe.' I'm here to tell you, I never called her."
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